suffer the remembrance of a former
distress and the apprehension of some future calamity. This is the
Cerberus with three heads we combat without ceasing. Our life might be
gay and happy if we would; but we eagerly seek subjects of affliction
to render it irksome and melancholy. We pass the first years of this
life in the shades of ignorance, the succeeding ones in pain and
labor, the latter part in grief and remorse, and the whole in error;
nor do we suffer ourselves to possess one bright day without a cloud.

[Footnote 28: From the "Treatise on the Remedies of Good and Bad
Fortune." An English translation of this work under the title
"Phisicke Against Fortune," made by Thomas Twyne, was published in
London in 1579.]

Let us examine this matter with sincerity, and we shall agree that our
distresses chiefly arise from ourselves. It is virtue alone which can
render us superior to Fortune; we quit her standard, and the combat is
no longer equal. Fortune mocks us; she turns us on her wheel: she
raises and abases us at her pleasure, but her power is founded on our
weakness. This is an old-rooted evil, but it is not incurable: there
is nothing a firm and elevated mind can not accomplish. The discourse
of the wise and the study of good books are the best remedies I know
of; but to these we must join the consent of the soul, without which
the best advice will be useless. What gratitude do we not owe to those
great men who, tho dead many ages before us, live with us by their
works, discourse with us, are our masters and guides, and serve us as
pilots in the navigation of life, where our vessel is agitated without
ceasing by the storms of our passions! It is here that true philosophy
brings us to a safe port, by a sure and easy passage; not like that of
the schools, which, raising us on its airy and deceitful wings, and
causing us to hover on the clouds of frivolous dispute, let us fall
without any light or instruction in the same place where she took us
up.

Dear friend, I do not attempt to exhort you to the study I judge so
important. Nature has given you a taste for all knowledge, but Fortune
has denied you the leisure to acquire it; yet, whenever you could
steal a moment from public affairs, you sought the conversation of
wise men; and I have remarked that your memory often served you
instead of books. It is therefore unnecessary to invite you to do what
you have always done; but, as we can not retain all we hear or read,